Easy Germination Experiment.

In this germination experiment we studied 4 seeds bird mix. We
wanted
to find out percentage of the seeds in the bird food that able to
germinate. Live seeds have more vitamins and less chances to be
contaminated with mold spores and bacterias then dead seeds.
So one of
the experiment purposes was to find if this food is healthy for the
birds.

The bird mix contained 4 different seeds in equal proportion. It's main
food for the small birds like canary or cockatiel.

The goal of
the experiment was to find germination rate and average germination
time of each kind of seeds.

Our hypothesis
was that the average germination time for different species will be
slightly different but similar due to the similar size of the seeds,
and they will have similar and pretty high germination rate. We
expected each kind of seeds to have germination rate above 50%. We also
expected to see normal
distribution in germination time.

Bird
food - mix of 4 seeds,
canola, linseed, canary seed and millet.

Experiment
setup

We had following constants in our germination experiment: constant
moisture,
constant lighting conditions, constant temperature, same substrate for
each kind of seeds, same amount of tested seeds.

Our variable was seed species.

We used following materials in our experiment:

4 plastic containers with transparent lids.

Paper towels covered with a piece of black
cotton cloth for substrate

~50 ml of water in each container.

100 seeds of each species.

One
hundred seeds of each species were selected for the test.

Each seed species was assigned to individual plastic
container. We put
paper towel on the bottom of each container and covered with the black
cloth for better visual contrast and observation convenience.

We selected 100 seeds of each kind for simplicity of our calculations.
Amount of germinated seeds becomes our germination rate.
Seeds of each species were laid out in appropriate containers in
grid-like pattern, 10 seeds in each of 10 lines.

Each container was covered with lid to keep environment moist.
Containers were located in well lit room but away from direct
sunlight.

Experiment setup

We checked containers each 24 hours, counted germinated seeds
and made
table of results. Seed counted as germinated if the root was
clearly visible and base of or the whole cotyledons were visible. In
the first
3 days no germinated seeds were detected. The only sign on germination
process was increased
volume of the seeds. On the 6th day of the experiment no more
germinated
seeds were found and mold started to appear on
the dead seeds. At this
time our germination experiment was terminated.

Result for the linseed

Result for canola.

Results:

Results of the experiment available in the tables 1 and 2.

No canary seeds and millet seeds germinated in 6 days period. Mold
signs on the seeds indicated that they were dead. It proved
wrong our hypothesis that all seeds in the mix will have similar
germination rate.

Majority of the seeds germinated over short period of time of few
hours. Our sampling rate of 24 hours made it hard to see the
distribution of germination rate over time. From our data we can make
conclusion that most of the seeds germinate at almost the same time
followed by the few weaker seeds that catching up in the next 2 days.

Part of our hypothesis that seeds will have similar
germination time
because they have similar size proved correct by available data
from live seeds.

Table 1. Results of the
germination experiment.

Table 2. Germination graph.

We found weighted
averagegermination time for Linseeds
and Canola
seeds by formula:

(X1*W1 +
X2*W2 + X3*W3)/W1+W2+W3

where X is the sample time (in days) and W is the amount of seeds
germinated at that day.

Linseed average germination time:

(3*83 + 4*2 + 4*5)/89 = 3.112
days

Canola seed average germination time:

(3*46 + 7*4 + 5*5)/58 = 3.293
days.

Conclusion:

4 seed bird mix contains more then 50% of dead seeds.
We don't know why
seeds are dead. That could be the result of pre-sale preparation of the
mix or because mix was kept longer then it supposed to. We
believe it
may not provide enough vitamins for the birds kept in a cage and is not
a very
healthy food. Birds fed with this type of food will require additional
vitamin supplements.

Using our data we calculated weighted average germination time
for
Linseed and Canola
seed which is 3.112 days and 3.293 day respectively. As we suggested in
our hypothesis germination time for this seeds is very similar.

Important
note. This experiment is NOT a real science fair project experiment.
It's rather simple example of science experiment structure
with goal, hypothesis, method, data and discussion of the
results. It also shows that hypothesis is not always and should not
always be proved correct.